Mobile wireless electronic devices are becoming increasingly popular. For example, mobile telephones, tablets, laptop computers, and portable gaming devices are now in wide-spread use. Many of these devices include a lighted display (e.g., an LED backlit display, an OLED display, etc.). In order to improve the user's ease and/or comfort of viewing the display, the brightness of the display may be adjusted depending on the amount of ambient light in the environment in which the device is used. For example, the ease of reading text displayed on the display in a brightly lit room (a high light intensity environment) may be improved by using a brighter display setting (e.g., to prevent washout). By contrast, it may be preferred to read the same text displayed on the display in a dark room (a low light intensity environment) using a dimmer display setting.
However, control over the brightness of the display continues to be an issue. For example, manual adjustment of the display brightness by the user proves to be inconvenient and cumbersome. In another example, control of the display brightness by automatically adjusting the brightness of the display in accordance with a detection result of a light sensor does not take into consideration the current state of light adaptation of a user's eyes. For example, a display screen that is automatically set to a low brightness level in a low light intensity environment may appear excessively dim to a user that has recently moved from a high light intensity environment to the low light intensity environment. The light sensor cannot be used to accurately determine the amount of time a user has spent in a low light intensity environment and/or a high light intensity environment, as the electronic device is often kept in a pocket or bag. Even in those situations where the electronic device is kept out in the open, the light sensor may be facing a surface (e.g., a table surface) that results in a false reading of the level of ambient light. Furthermore, the light sensor is incapable of knowing if the user has been in a different location than the device.